This article looks at prospective supply and demand factors for financial assets in the New Year and beyond. Investors should take into account money flowing into and out of financial assets as well as stock flows, particularly escalating government bond issuance, which looks likely to accelerate significantly in the coming years. It adds up to the fundamental case for physical gold and silver.

At this time of year, the thoughtful soul considers prospects for markets. Pundits are laying out their forecasts, and they fall into two broad camps. There are brokers and fund managers who talk of value. Their income and assets under management depend on continually inflating prices. Then there are the pessimists, a ragbag of doom-mongers who sweepingly point to risks on a grand scale. The collapse of Italy, Deutsche Bank, China, Brexit… take your pick. Very few engage on the subject that really matters, and that is the underlying monetary flows into and out of financial markets.

Warren Buffett’s company more than quadrupled its third-quarter profits because of a huge paper gain in the value of its investments, although its insurance and railroad businesses also improved.

Notably, Buffett’s company bought back nearly $1 billion in stock during the quarter — the first time that’s happened in years — a possible sign that the world’s most famous investor has been unable to find attractive investments to purchase.

Powell and Co. hiked again. And the FOMC removed the important phrase about “accommodative” stance. What now for gold?

Yesterday, the FOMC published the monetary policy statement from its latest meeting that took place on September 25-26. In line with the expectations, the US central bank raised the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to the target range of 2 to 2.25 percent:

What kind of number for GDP growth in the 2nd quarter will we get on Friday? The market consensus is somewhere around 4 percent, but there are many out there that are expecting a number above 5 percent. The last time we witnessed such a number was during the third quarter of 2014 when the U.S. economy grew by 5.2 percent. If Friday’s GDP figure is better than that, it will be the best report that we have had since 2003. But let’s keep things in perspective. In seven of the last 10 years, GDP growth was much lower than anticipated in the first quarter and much higher than anticipated in the second quarter. It looks like that pattern may play out again in 2018, and analysts are already warning us to expect a much lower number for the third quarter.